Research project RE-source has won the prestigious Dutch Design Award 2019 in the category "design research". The project maps waste streams in Rotterdam and provides strategies to tackle these in a different manner, not as waste but as a source of raw materials.
Describing a challenge, designing a solution for that, seeing whether it works, modifying the design, investigating it again and then readjusting it. In a nutshell, that is design research. 'Meanwhile, you not only examine which design works best, but mainly which new ways you can use to approach such a problem', says David Hamers, project leader of RE-source. He is a lector at the Design Academy Eindhoven and a researcher at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. 'This approach does not deliver a ready-made design like in the world of engineering, but it does yield surprising new approaches. You discover how you can reframe such a problem. Hence the name of our project: RE-source.'
Turning the system upside down
RE-source is a collaboration between Design Academy Eindhoven/Readership in Places and Traces, VU Amsterdam/Design Cultures, Studio Ester van de Wiel and Rotterdam City Council. The project investigates how residual waste can be reused as a source of raw materials. The two-year project is funded by NWO Domain Social Sciences and Humanities and the Taskforce for Applied Research SIA, within the programme "Smart Culture – Arts and Culture". It is now in the concluding phase. 'We do not work in a neatly defined laboratory', says Hamers, 'but at the centre of daily practice in Rotterdam. We create new situations in an existing system, as a result of which that system is briefly turned upside down, and, ultimately improved.'
Raw material for something new
RE-source focuses on five materials that play a role in the public space and that residual waste flows provide: paving stones, street furniture, sludge, plant material and grass. 'These materials are very visible in the city', says Hamers, 'but what you do not see are the other systems in which they now function and in which they subsequently disappear out of sight on a waste pile. How do those systems work and how can you intervene in these?'
The researchers work together with a wide range of parties, from pavers to policymakers and from the municipal parks department to managers of material depots. Hamers takes grass as an example. 'Ecological grass management means mowing less', he says, 'but that therefore yields more grass per occasion mown, which you can no longer leave lying there but have to dispose of. Now that grass leaves the city via the contractors where it is eventually composted. But you can also use it as raw material for something new.'
Upcycling
One of the RE-Source researchers designed a process in which the grass is processed into high-value paper products, such as stationary or paper flowers, which can be used as a promotional gift. Hamers: 'What you would otherwise dispose of now acquires a higher value through upcycling due to its aesthetic and symbolic function. It is something unique to Rotterdam that tells a story about the circular city.'
Grass is the simplest example in the project, says Hamers. For the other materials, the story is more complex. As a second example, he refers to the benches from the public space, which are now often removed for a long period if they need to be repaired. The team designed a way of giving the benches a public function in the intervening period as equipment for a workout. 'A performance-based approach enables people to think about materials in an entirely different manner', says Hamers.
Social questions
The aim of the subprojects is to give a stimulus to circular thinking. 'For this, we combine design practice with research methods from the humanities', says Hamers. 'By choosing different entry points, we can do research in a very different manner and exert an influence on society. That is a valuable addition to the existing research palette and also necessary if we are to tackle the major societal issues we currently face'. He laughs. 'And doing it is great fun too.'
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